Foxcatcher

I feel as though the latest run of biopic films has culminated with this film. And although Foxcatcher is a biopic that chronicles the relationship between Olympic wrestler Mark Shultz and billionaire industrialist John du Pont, I feel it also is a snapshot into the wrestling world of the late 1980s.

Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum) is trying to make ends meet speaking at schools across America, but still lives in the shadow of his older brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo). One day, Mark gets a phone call from the estate of John du Pont (Steve Carrell), the heir to the du Pont family fortune, to come and discuss leading a wrestling team that John wants to set up. Mark agrees and is hoping to win gold at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. As time progresses, du Pont's behaviour starts to display signs of madness.

This film is a marvel of direction. Bennett Miller knows how to use his actors properly and is amazing at making beautiful and evocative shots. Many times throughout the film when there is great stress happening on screen, the sound drops away to emphasise the powerful images that are being presented to us, a technique which I have always loved.

Like American Sniper, Foxcatcher is a patriotic film. This patriotism, however, is laced with a certain cynicism, with du Pont manipulating other people's sense of nationalism to his own ends. The film also gives a more detailed look into competitive wrestling than I have witnessed before. Since I only learn about the world through movies, my only real exposure had been through scenes in The World According to Garp or Born On the Fourth of July, but here I was exposed to the raw physicality of the sport. There is a jaw dropping scene at the beginning of the film where Tatum and Ruffalo are training together and you can sense the unspoken power struggle between the two. 

This film has some truly transformative performances. Channing Tatum's Mark Schultz isn't the brightest human around and Tatum somehow makes the guy endearing, despite the fact that the character can be slightly one-dimensional at times. Carrell is engaging as du Pont and the movie really shows how charming he was. I was a bit disappointed that Miller didn't make it as clear that he was a paranoid schizophrenic, but Carrell does portray the creepiness to his character well. Mark Ruffalo gives probably my favourite performance of the whole movie as Dave and he really does show how versatile an actor he is here.

Overall, Foxcatcher is a superb movie that despite having some minor problems, I felt that Vanessa Redgrave and Sienna Miller's characters could have been used and explored more and the ending is a tiny bit historically inaccurate, but that's okay given the run time of the film, it is definitely a movie people should watch.